The Heartland Institute in Chicago, a major advocate for charters and vouchers, has issued a statement supporting Rahm Emanuel and urging him to be firm in resisting the demands of the Chicago Teachers Union. Is Mayor Emanuel at the right convention?
Heartland Institute Education Expert Reacts to
Chicago Teachers Union Strike Threat
The Chicago Teachers Union on Wednesday filed unfair labor practice charges against Chicago Public Schools, and CTU President Karen Lewis says the union will not extend its Monday, September 10 deadline to reach a new contract or go on strike.
The following statement from Joy Pullmann of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact Tammy Nash at tnash@heartland.org and 312/377-4000. After regular business hours, contact Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org and 312/731-9364.
“The Chicago Teachers Union is playing a game of chicken with taxpayer dollars, parent patience, and children’s futures. Their threats to strike, bluffs or not, should be seen for the craven malfeasance that represents what’s wrong with the incredibly expensive and ineffective Chicago Public Schools.
“Chicago teachers make about a third more than the average Cook County worker, and they receive far better pensions. The city is as broke as its hobos. Mayor Rahm Emanuel shouldn’t blink, and voters should demand the union stand down.”
Joy Pullmann
Research Fellow, The Heartland Institute
Managing Editor, School Reform News
jpullmann@heartland.org
312/377-4000
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who’s playing a game of chicken with the students lives, if not the edudeformers?
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Rahm Emanuel has Obama and Duncan behind him and I would guess, probably a lot of “reform” money but that’s just speculation on my part. Rahm is a ruthless, foul mouthed gutter fighter, he will fight dirty. Karen Lewis called him a bully and liar, gee, sounds like Chris Christie. Rahm is sort of like the Democratic version of Tom Delay but without all the phoney baloney fake religiosity of Tom Delay. I can only wish the Chicago teachers all the best and I hope they win. The good guys need a win for a change.
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This has to be a big distraction for the Democrats, especially the Chicago Dems. and after the election the push-back will be great. Obama doesn’t like to take advice from Bill Clinton. He even managed to curtail Hillary’s power when he appointed Richard Holbrooke as Mideast envoy. On the issue of the Afghan elections, he took his advice over Hillary. Turns out she was right. When Clinton advisers told him to visit the Gulf region immediately after the oil spill, they said thank you, but no thank you. Another big mistake. Now they had to “correct” a platform that clearly hurt their chances with Jewish voters. And they never put the focus on the mid-term elections. Bill and Hillary would have worked hard to get Democrats elected. Instead we have the obstructionist Tea Party.
Yesterday was Bill’s night. It validated the fact that he is a stronger force than Obama. He would never let the Chicago teachers be bullied.
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Just to clarify: Had Hillary won the election, she would have focused on the midterm elections. The Clintons learned that the hard way. when they lost Democratic seats. Obama should have realized the consequences of losing the midterm election.
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“Is Mayor Emanuel at the right convention?”
LOL!
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I just posted this on another one of the postings today. This one seems even more appropriate. It is obvious who is playing politics.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-farmer/cps-gets-a-lesson-in-soci_b_1853230.html
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I would have expected nothing else from Heartland Institute.
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Chicago aldermen have been sending out announcements on community email lists this week about contingency plans if there is a strike on Monday.
Families can sign up to send their children to designated schools from 8:30 – 12:30 on Monday. They are calling them “Children First” sites –nomenclarure clearly taken straight from the corporate education “Rheeform” PR playbook, intended to make teachers and their union look bad for striking. The sites will supposedly be open so poor children can get their free meals. (Never heard anyone ever express a concern about kids not being able to eat before when students are out of school, like during the summer.)
The sites are going to be staffed primarily by people from Central Office, according to Karen Lewis, not by professionals who have experience working with kids, and they will be getting ONE day of training tomorrow. (Another Rheeform type magic bullet strategy.) The Board asked teachers to not picket at the 144 schools that will be open, so kids won’t be exposed to that. Oh, please.
A half a day with inexperienced baby sitters is not going to be very beneficial to children. I don’t know how that can even be legal, since anyone supervising children in schools must be certified and, at the very least, should have been finger printed and have cleared background checks on file. (I have to wonder if these folks will have gotten those in 10 days –in my experience, it takes much longer to get the results.)
Parents would be wise to make their own arrangements for child care, as they would any other time the schools are closed.
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Karen Lewis looked very dejected in her interview on the local news tonight and I’ve never seen her like that before, but reporters stated that negotiations today had not taken place with the parties even talking to each other in the same room, so this explains a lot to me.
Remember when Obama campaigned in 2007 and said, “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States. The workers deserve to know that someone’s standing with them.”
Well, I think it’s time the President showed Americans that he doesn’t just fulfill backdoor political campaign promises to the 1%. He needs to demonstrate that he is standing with Chicago teachers, by either talking to his buddy Rahm about engaging in collective bargaining or by walking the picket line with public school teachers in his home town.
Obama’s education policies have alienated his teacher base, as many who previously campaigned and voted for him are now amongst the 3 to 5 percent of undecided voters who, political analysts say, will be determining this election. Despite union endorsements, teachers are on the fence because, at least in part, as Bernie Sanders says, “Fraud is the business model for Wall Street” and teachers know all too well that education “reform” implements the business model.
17 years of the business model for education in Chicago inidicates that the achievement gap has only widened for black children:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-11-14/news/ct-met-cps-racial-gap-1114-20111114_1_performance-gap-cps-jean-claude-brizard
It’s time the business model was replaced with a more progressive and humanistic model of education. We could benefit from such a model in politics, too. It’s time Obama overtly demonstrated empathy for workers and support for ALL of the unions which made the middle class possible in America.
Disclaimer: I am not now nor have I ever been a member of a teachers’ union.
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